Holographic imaging for 3D cells morphology in microfluidic flow

The complete cells characterization in microfluidic flow can be achieved by using the quantitative phase imaging by digital holography as imaging tool. In fact, by assuring the complete 3D rotation of flowing cells, it is possible to recover their 3D refractive index mapping by using the tomographic phase-contrast reconstruction. In this paper, we investigate all steps need to obtain the tomographic reconstruction of flowing cells. In particular, we employ a holographic 3D tracking algorithm to follow each cells that moves in the field of view, along with a suitable tracking angle method for the cell's tumbling. Moreover, a fluid modeling is used to characterize the cell rotation effect. We test the proposed processing pipeline for circulating tumor cells.